I'm not a Klingon ( )
Shawn Steele's thoughts about Windows and .Net Framework globalization APIs
Code pages and security issues
One of the reasons I always suggest "Use Unicode!" is that there are security problems converting...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 01/17/2008
https://www.languagegeek.com/
https://www.languagegeek.com/ says it is dedicated to the promotion of Native North American...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 12/19/2007
Cantonese and Manderin language tagging.
The IETF "Language Tag Registry Update" working group has noted that lots of data is tagged as...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 12/14/2007
zh-Hans, zh-Hant and the "old" zh-CHS, zh-CHT
With Windows Vista and Microsoft .Net 2.0 (MS07-040 security patch) and 3.0+, we've started to use...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 12/13/2007
Michael has a blog about converting apps from ANSI to Unicode
Lots of apps are now Unicode, but some need to make the shift from ANSI (like Japanese shift-jis) to...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 11/21/2007
How do you make your regional and language options apply to new user accounts?
In general its a good idea to allow users to choose appropriate settings, but being able to adjust...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 10/04/2007
What's a genitive month name anyway?
I’m not a linguistic expert, so I’ll probably get this a bit wrong, but basically a genitive month...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 08/03/2007
"Windows Vista Command Line Configuration of International Settings" is on-line on MSDN
Generally its a good idea to let the users figure out their international settings, but sometimes...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 08/01/2007
Locale Builder Beta 2 is Available
The long awaited Microsoft Locale Builder Beta 2 is now available for immediate download at...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 07/31/2007
UTF-16, UTF-8 & UTF-32 update to conform with Unicode 5.0's security concerns.
My post Change to Unicode Encoding for Unicode 5.0 conformance now applies to .Net 2.0 with MS07-040...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 07/23/2007
Vista international configuration document on-line
As I've said before, its often good to honor the user's international settings, which they can set...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 07/11/2007
I see my favorite Ansi function has the behavior I want.
Occasionally I am asked about the A version of a W function. Ie: GetLocaleInfoA does something that...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 06/15/2007
Almost dismasted
As you may have guessed from the photo, I like to sail. I have an F-25 trimaran "Gazelle" that was...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 06/11/2007
Why can't we strip the diacritics?
We have some "best-fit" behavior which we generally consider to be "bad". Any loss of data is...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 06/08/2007
Encoder/Decoder Encoding fallbacks fail after 2GB of data has been converted
We have an unfortunate bug in .Net v2.0+ that causes encoding or decoding of more than 2GB of data...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 06/07/2007
Updated custom culture sample workaround for the .Net 2.0 Culture Name Change
I updated the sample for Vista changes .Net 2.0 Locale Names, sample work around custom...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 06/05/2007
How to tell if the collation version changed.
I added this to the msdn wiki for collation, but I'll blog about it here too. Occasionally we change...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 06/01/2007
DateTime.Parse() and DateTime.TryParse() fail in some cases
DateTime.Parse and DateTime.TryParse fail in .Net 2.0 if the user locale date override has a space...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 05/10/2007
MLang & MSXML6 doesn't like UTF-7
In some cases MLang (on which MSXML6 depends) can added extra ? to decoded UTF-7 data, which can...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 05/04/2007
How do I get HKSCS 2004 characters from Big-5 in .Net?
Well, that's pretty tricky. We provide the Microsoft Character Code Conversion Routines For...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 05/03/2007
How do I get my ANSI based application to run correctly?
A common question is "how do I get my ANSI based code page application to run on a system that has a...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 05/02/2007
Please avoid UTF-7
UTF-7 inherently some of the security issues that concern people about encodings. For example, by...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 05/01/2007
Understanding locale & culture "display" names
Between Microsoft.Net's CultureInfo and the Window's NLS GetLocaleInfoEx() APIs locales/cultures...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 04/26/2007
Garfield "It's All About..." Series App Compatibility and Windows Vista
I have two kids, and they have computers with kid's games. Kid's games are all really scary because...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 04/17/2007
Configuring Regional and Language Options International Settings with command line automation
Administrators like to set international settings from the command line. (Ie: Regional and Language...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 04/12/2007
Why Me? :-)
Our spam filters here are pretty good, but every once in a while I get a spam mail offers to sell me...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 03/26/2007
DateTime.Parse() fails when separator is " " (space) in .Net v2.0 RTM
In Whidbey (Microsoft.Net v2.0), DateTime.Parse() throws an exception if the date separator is a...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 03/19/2007
Hacking Code Pages, or "How to Totally Hose Your Machine AND Your Data".
WARNING: If you do any of the things in this blog you could end up with majorly messed up data, an...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 03/17/2007
.Net Framework Encoding Sample
A blog post I saw recently (A .Net Unicode Puzzle) reminded me of a sample we'd written for the .Net...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 03/05/2007
Code Pages, Unicode & Encodings
I hope to put some links to interesting posts about Code Pages/Unicode/Encodings here. Use Unicode!...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 02/27/2007
New "stickies"
I was having a hard time finding some of my own interesting posts, so I've decided to add a list...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 02/21/2007
Custom Cultures / Vista Custom Locales
I've blogged about Vista custom locales / .Net custom cultures. Here's an index of some of the more...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 02/21/2007
First day of week and the Vista Calendar Gadget
A user asked how to make the first day of the week on the Vista Calendar gadget a Monday because...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 02/20/2007
Remember not to use strings for random byte sequences.
A different, more secure, Shawn, blogged "Don't Roundtrip Ciphertext Via a String Encoding". I've...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 02/15/2007
Keyboard Layout Creator for Vista released.
Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator version 1.4 has now been released. See...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 01/30/2007
Locale Builder Beta Expired - Beta 2 now available
The Microsoft locale builder beta download has expired.(Updated 31 July 2007)The locale builder beta...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 01/18/2007
Problems compiling resources in .Net 2.0 apps after updates.
[10 July 2007] The security patch of 10 July 2007...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 11/14/2006
Some custom locale examples.
Here're some custom locale examples in various formats (1.8 MB .zipped download). These are to be...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 11/07/2006
Expected names of Microsoft Windows "ANSI" Code Pages (Encodings)
I was asked about our use of the windows "ansi" code page names, as used in things like MIME types,...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 11/06/2006
Vista changes .Net 2.0 Locale Names, sample work around custom cultures/locales
[10 July 2007] The recent security patch to .Net changed the behavior on other Windows versions as...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 10/13/2006
Example of overriding your own Encoding.
Previously I wrote about the Best Way to Make Your Own Encoding, but didn't include an example, so...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 10/12/2006
Rambling about RFC 4690 and IDN
There's a reasonably new RFC 4690 ( https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4690.txt ) that raises a bunch of...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 10/10/2006
RFC 3066 has been replaced by RFC 4646
I've mentioned RFC 3066, which describes locale names such as en-US, in some posts. Its now finally...
Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 10/05/2006